unwanted precipitate in the freezer

[Leon Trout]

so here's the situation... last night, for the first time, i encountered a fairly serious emulsion while doing a STB with heptane... applied a generous portion of salt & it split right up... making me happy...

well, this morning, not so happy... i've got mad, mad precipitate in my jars... if i didn't know what i was doing, i'd have turned cartwheels... there must be 5 grams at least of white powder on the bottom of my jars... thing is, i can see the DMT crystals growing on the rest of what i figure to be salt...

2 questions:

why did the salt end up in my non-polar to begin with?

&

any advice on separating the salt from the thing i really want to keep?

i've not even drained the heptane off the jars yet, could take a photo if that would help.

 

[Eliyahu]

Are you certain it's salt and not DMT???

I just used the salt tek recently and it worked great, course I used naptha..though

 

[Vodsel]

Since sodium chloride is not soluble in heptane, maybe what you have there is water crystals?

 

[Leon Trout]

it is ice... which baffles me, as i'm not just exactly sure how it was still in my solvent, but at least i've got some kind of a grip on this...

now that i know i've got a dmt/h2o thing going on, i should be able to just basify that water & pull from it as normal, correct?

 

[Vodsel]

If everything else is correct, you got DMT in freebase form already dissolved in the heptane, so the only thing you have to do is separate.

I would let it back to room temp and pull the heptane again. If the amount of water in the FP container is very small and separation is difficult, you can always add more water. If the water is distilled it should not affect the DMT you have in there, but you can always add a pinch of sodium carbonate to basify the water, shake a little and you get a sodium carb wash for the same price

 

[Leon Trout]

exactly what i ended up doing... many thanks for the help... :thumb_up: